Sympathy for the Devil

In John Oliver's latest video on Police brutality, an off hand remark caught my attention. Oliver spoke about two police officers in Minneapolis who had decorated a Christmas tree with a piece of fried chicken, malt liqour, menthol cigarettes and other clearly racist paraphernalia. Oliver remarked that this was perhaps "the most racist Christmas thing since declaring a baby born in the Middle East white" - referring to Jesus.

I have thought about this often. I think privileged groups - men, white people, heterosexuals are sometimes held to what I would call unfairly high standards. Humans are fallible and may not live upto the high standards that we would like them to. Meeting these high standards has become the cross to bear for privileged groups more than others. I think a lot of right wing anger comes from the inherent inequality and hypocrisy of such a gesture.

Lets take the Jesus thing. I have read anthropological accounts of Christianity in Africa wherein Jesus was understood as a magician, wizard and oracle of extraordinary power more than the son of God. Given native African traditions of witchcraft, seeing Jesus this way - as a very powerful magician who could turn water into wine etc and come back from the dead - made total sense. Thus the African story became one of weilding power rather than the typical Christian virtues of sacrifice, love, mercy etc that we usually think of.

In Papua New Guinea, I have heard that a tribe now thinks of itself as the real Israelites - the original Jews etc. There is nothing unique or special about what white people did with Jesus. When cultures adopt or co-opt something they typically make it their own - transform it, change it etc in some way. In fact it would be highly unusual if white people had maintained that the son of God was Middle Eastern. Now that would be pretty interesting.

The problem with Oliver's comment is having in mind an "authentic"/ "original" and a subsequently disrespectful/ racist co-option. The problem with Oliver's POV is that it also delegitimizes the African and Papua New Guinea versions as well which don't have an Olive skinned Jesus either. This privileging of the "original" and the "authentic" is precisely what drives a lot of radical Islam for instance - lets make Islam Great Again ala ISIS, Sufi Islam isn't "real" Islam so lets smash Sufi shrines etc.

If anthropology and history are testament to anything - it is that there is no shortage of violence and bigotry. An uncomfortable aspect of the African slave trade was that the Europeans capitalized on an already existing and established practice of African slavery. Africans caught and sold other African men, women and children to Europeans.

My concern is that every time we make these special demands of say white people, we give ammunition to the right wing which is only too happy to use these instances to delegitimize legitimate concerns. Acknowledging that white people aren't especially perverse or bad or evil - some civilizational anomaly in having some special capacity for monstrosity would go a long way I think in helping build solidarity in the fight for social justice.

PS: There is. a wonderful essay by Laura Bohannon called "Shakespeare in the Bush". Its not very long and an excellently written piece. Anyhow, Bohannon ends up among the TIV in Africa and the elders of the tribe ask her to tell them a story one day during a drinking session. By the time Bohannon finishes telling the story of Hamlet, it is barely recognizable as Hamlet. Through cross examination, frequent interruptions, comments and criticisms, the Tiv elders have turned it into a completely Tiv story. The standard liberal arts education uses Bohannon's account to remark on how different worldviews will see the same thing differently or some such trite moral.

But how would we sitting in liberal classrooms read this story if the roles were reversed? A Tiv woman tells a couple of drunk male elders (lets call them anthropologists) a Tiv story. The drunk male anthropologists frequently interrupt and correct the woman, even presuming often that she doesn't really know what the story is about/ she can't be right - that makes no sense! they protest - she must have got it wrong (all of which happens in Bohannon's account btw). By the time the Tiv woman finishes her tale, it sounds a lot more like Hamlet than a Tiv story.

A liberal arts reading would probably accuse the anthropologists of both sexism and racism/ eurocentrism.

Now a conservative or right wing question might be why in the first case do we celebrate diversity of POV but in the second case why do we accuse someone of having their own unique POV?